Talk back

In this era when museums love to talk about participation and involvement one of the big questions is what can institutions expect their visitors to do for them? After all, it's those visitors who are usually footing the bill for the institution to develop expertise so asking everyday punters to 'contribute' to professional decisions kind of feels both patronising and in bad faith.

A classic recent example was the Georgia Museum of Art asked visitors to vote on which four of five similar paintings it should sell off (or, as it was put with the appropriate positive professional spin) which one “should we keep”! It’s an idea that has also been used by the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago (and will probably end up being used here one day). The DePaul invited “scholars from art history, philosophy, and anthropology—and visitors “ to “weigh in on the works of art and their fate”. You don’t have to be a genius to figure that the same public won't be asked to “weigh in” on which new works should be put into the collection. That sort of decision doubtless requires ‘experts’. 

Sometimes though the contribution of visitors can stop you in your tracks. That was certainly the case with some Post-it type notes we saw pinned up in the Auckland Art Gallery’s Triennial Lab (it was during the AUT iteration). Visitors were asked to answer two questions central to curator Hou Hanru’s theme for the Triennial. “If you could live anywhere where would it be?” and “Why don’t you live there?”

One response could have stood in for the entire Triennial.
 
IF YOU COULD LIVE ANYWHERE WHERE WOULD IT BE?

“NZ”

WHY DON’T YOU LIVE THERE?

“Immigration problem”